Month 5 of 42 – My First Formal Progress Report (FFPR) is now complete. All is fine. I am the student who can, “accept the supervisors feedback and builds upon it”. Those are prized words in the appraisal of my progress. Three other comments were most welcomed too. [1] regarding my bi-weekly written submissions, “the quality of the submitted deliverables has improved”; [2] regarding my research problem and reasoning, “…this is a very much improved paper and I actually don’t have too many comments”; [3] regarding my means to prepare an academic idea, “improved substantially from the initial proposal”. My most cherished feedback however is of being credited with an attitude of adaptability – i.e., the accepting of feedback and building upon it – because that is to the heart of what my research is turning to.
🧠 Brain plasticity
In regard to my own control, I have in mind here plasticity. Human brain plasticity is a lifelong property that happens within a more rigid frame. Adapting and morphing within a range but changing at molecular, chemical, and physiological scale. The main impetus of which is external environmental change, but in humans that is also an intended change to our environment. We are both the intentional actor, whilst also being acted upon.
💭 Behavioural plasticity
Therefore a PhD candidate aged 50 (i.e., someone like me), has a brain capable of adapting much as someone aged 25. However, some of these adaptations are beginning from a longer lived history, longer period of morphology, and – most critically – from different socially adapted norms over that much longer timeframe. My brain plasticity remains, but do I intend behavioural plasticity too? Social psychology describes this as both changing behaviours to change attitude; and attitude changes that can alter how we behave. That same intentional actor, whilst also being acted upon.
☔️ Environmental stability
Social psychology also confirms that attitude is a most subtle changer of behaviour. Weak when compared to the more impactful wider social norms and inner desires. Attitude is the least effective means to change behaviour. Yet it is also the factor we can most obviously act upon. The wider world – social norms, values, conventions; as well as individual perspectives and desires – play equally fundamental but more powerful roles than attitude. A prolonged period of significant personal change therefore requires a predictable environment. Attitude can be overridden by stronger social or personal need. Few people I know aged 50 have that economic freedom, or such limited social responsibility. I am claiming 42 months of selfish stability, and of all that enables that possibility, least of all is the ongoing plasticity of the brain. These are the limits of the intentional actor, and the more powerful impacts of being acted upon.
The conclusion offered for now is simply that a PhD is a process not an outcome (as is all of life). It is a time of great change, but it is change within a wider stability. I am therefore grateful that I have all externals under some semblance of control. And grateful too, to those outside parties that help make that so. These are not just my efforts or my attitude. There is a great deal of economic and social factoring here, too. An attitude open to change but within a stability that enables a greater sense of autonomy and self-control. It is that collective that means I can “accept feedback, and build upon it”. An actor, free to choose to be acted upon.
I suspect my decision to deactivate my Twitter account will be almost universally unnoticed. But occasionally it feels good to just severe ties. To see enacted sociopathic attitude, malevolent intentions, and belief so opposed to my own that it was time to pull the plug.
Bye bye Twitter. You were my least liked platform of misinformation, anyway. Bye bye to the baiters, the denigrators, and the hateful propagators. And thank you Ego Must for making such an overt effort to confirm the lack of humanity and humility by such an exemplary disregard for care. I understand the reasoning but deplore whole heartedly the callousness – the classlessness – in how the deed was done.
Those were human beings waiting for those emails. How ridiculous that redundancy pantomime was.
Get yourself to Mars, Elon. You’ll be happier alone…
Tang Ping : is to lay flat. A controversial phrase popularised by its supposedly being banned in State control of social media in China. Supposedly. It is associated with possibility of social rebellion of industrial scale apathy. To lay flat at work, is to be present but unproductive and unseen. Quiet Quitting has therein become the August phrase of choice to collectively approximate disengagement of a workforce, especially of the young.
Quiet quitting. I am immediately on edge by this trending phrase. Simply because it seems to have captured the imagination of folk-psychology and has happily landed into immediate everyday language as something to be diagnosed and cured.
I found myself saying the following on a LinkedIn post today:
“Quiet quitting” will be the next great harm. Not as a thing, but as a grouping of issues that become hidden by this term. Just as “wokeism” becomes a convenience of debate. We get to the heart of a problem by pulling it apart. Not bundling constraints up into a pithy phrase. Mental health starts with the dissonance being exposed, not upheld. Quiet quitting is not a phenomenon to manage, it is a false-step of pseudo-diagnosis being shared in the dark.”
Unsupported in academic writing. A few hours of searching through my university library is a cursory look. I have not researched this thoroughly. But I have found no academically obvious links to bring “quiet quitting” into my corner of science i.e., psychology. Psychology Today have found means to comment using the term in blogspace, but this quickly moved into surer footing. As to peer reviewed papers, I have had to turn to a management journal piece from 2018 that offers pre-quitting behaviour as a connection of sorts. However, the more socially constructed truism or appropriation seems the less rigorous source of a term I suspect is already here to stay. Please let me know if a more thorough check of academic literature offers more support than my brief examination uncovered.
Let us find ways to engage. This is not to discredit the notion of what quiet quitting is suggesting overall. We must certainly have the discussion about engagement. Let us widen this out to the full teleological discussion of life, or the subsets of priorities, meaning, and how to better share goals. Let us perhaps further widen this challenge towards long-term objectives; innate motivations; autonomy of action; all of which I believe brings sustainability discussion to the fore. But let us proceed with more rigour and less reaction to trend.
PhD and me. I will have such teleological challenge close to hand in my PhD research into project threat. I begin that in earnest in a month from now. And if personal observation from consulting and discourse is indicative, “engagement” is an emergent discussion – one I am now having regularly.
Fashions are not facts. But please, please, let us not fall into the easiest of all traps – and ironically be directed in our efforts based upon nothing more than the hearsay of popular everyday truisms. Truisms that are founded on nothing other than the media circus that now distracts us from longer-term purpose in the today.
Three reasons random invites fail, and why you should be worried if they succeed…
This blog is prompted by a noted increase in the number of random invite connections received on LinkedIn this month. I love connecting with new people, but some basics can be identified which seem to offer a universal truth.
visibility | behaviour | trust
I conclude this is principally a question of trust. But this connects to visibility, and to behaviour, with both necessarily increased if trust is to be found.
v | b | trust
Random invites. Context free and no prior history. Unless of course they can find you off-guard, but that is intent (i.e., behavioural) which should be inviting more than distrust because of the hidden truth that reveals (i.e., visibility).
v | behaviour | t
This is the behaviour of someone in a rush; or grouping you with many others; or hiding their intentions, concealing their real identity, and/or attempting to appeal to vanity where the less information offered is enabling more directed distraction. As such invites are also more likely part of a cluster, this offered more indicators that the invitation is intended for spamming or farming or otherwise hidden intent (i.e., purposeful low visibility)
visibility | b | t
This random invite is offering minimal visibility. With no note to bring to attention toward the intent of the invite. Less information, offering more uncertainty. Or targeted information without intended subterfuge (i.e., negative behaviour). Perhaps this is overtly using a profile title or photo image to attempt to skip past checks. Note how much more suspicious it is when with minimal extra effort you reveal there is limited information in the profile to offer context.
These are three categories to consider why random invites fail. Low trust, reinforced by minimal information or positive action.
The intentional deceit. And so what of covert attempts to overcome these signals? When might these random invites succeed? How about appealing to that covert side of our own behaviour, using that same overtly visible shallowness against us. Why might that work? I think deep down, we all know. It’s the means to override our more attuned sense of when to trust. Am I alone in being doubly suspicious when an unnecessarily dressed up face wants to say hello? Too right, I am. And if you are selling yourself by your image, that’s precisely the unsaid term I have just used. Without apology. Without limitation to ones preferences or bias. There are plenty doing this from all sides. These seem to me the most common-sense flags to avoid the many fake accounts that overtly play this game.
Examples of invite warning signs:
reliance upon shallow appeal (e.g., photo, title, pod followership)
offering little in way of content or prior chat
nothing relatable in profiles
industry or geography that seems completely left field
The interaction of visibility | behaviour | trust
So let me finally return to that telling lack of a note. That should say plenty. Why would you think someone is going to accept an invitation without a note that has something that connects you?
Conversely, I do actually send invitations without a note. But only because prior discussion has made that blatantly unnecessary. But then that’s increased trust, built via prior visibility and relatable behaviours.
Trust is built upon these principles, but should also be where it is lost…
“…are your people empowered to spot quality issues, and the conditions that breed them, and speak up…?”
Dave Stitt (2022) “Coach for results”
A blog to briefly congratulate Dave Stitt on a book worth a place on the desk of any construction manager (and people managers everywhere).
Coach for Results : Empower your people to achieve the extraordinary. Dave Stitt (2022)
Dave and I connected instantly when we first spoke last year, completely unrelated to this or any other book. Our discussions have been varied since, always with shared enthusiasm, and unabashed confidence of where we have been, or going. His energy is infectious, his perspectives easy to align to, with pithy anecdote never far behind.
It was therefore no surprise at all to read his 2022 book in similarly attuned frame of mind. His passion comes through on every page; and the anecdotes help keep a steady pace, fixing each new point firmly into the construction paradigm.
Coaching Leadership
Here is Dave explaining what is different in engaging with your people in a coaching style
“…you stop seeing them as a problem to be fixed and you start seeing them as a treasure to be discovered…you say, ‘what do you think?’, and then you listen…you the coach and them the thinker…”
Stitt (2022) Coach for Results pp9-10
and Dave of the wider cultural transition possible
“…courtesy, respect, and esteem are universal…it is the antidote to exclusionary micro-cultures…”
Stitt (2022) Coach for Results pp25
The premise of the book is not new. The coaching leadership style is well documented and has probably not passed by any MBA or well-read manager or consultant. But Dave’s writing is to the point, backed up with pertinent example, and just enough academic reference to be assured the bridge between the two is secure. Crucially, everything is directed back to what counts most: the day to day of management and leadership, as it connects to the construction project world; and the care and growth of those coming through that are its future, and it’s today. Chapter 4 of this second edition offers confirmation of this appreciation, from at least a dozen cohorts from his accompanying training course.
Self-Determination Theory
As part of my psychology MSc this year, one module focused upon classical and contemporary social psychology. I have concluded that much of the management jargon I have been fed over the years, at least the decent concepts, have been influenced from here. Dave has a chapter outlining one of the most significant revelations (in my opinion). He does not name the series of connected theories per se, but he cites Dan Pink who is well respected in this psychological field, and Dave describes this and related theories perfectly.
It is called Self-Determination Theory, one I have written about before {here}. It helps explain why our obsession with motivation by cash incentive, as employer of internal teams or of external contracts and work packages, ultimately causes organisational or project harm. As Dave states “…external enticements…extrinsic motivations…are not very effective…” pp11, to which he then makes the comparison to command-and-control style management which is very much the abrasive construction norm most can relate (be that employee or supply chain relationship carrot and stick, comply or die culture we all know).
In Dave’s words:
“…command and control…sucks initiative, confidence and accountability out of a team…”
Stitt (2022) pp26
“…risky when…commercial agendas are indifferent to the success of the project as a whole…. Are your people empowered to spot quality issues, and the conditions that breed them, and speak up…?”
Stitt (2022) pp27
Understanding these implications of externalising motivations are lessons we should all have close to hand.
Managing the coaching conversation
Thereafter Dave offers some excellent practical advice in managing the coaching conversations. As an empathetic manager myself, with training from several multinational organisations seeking to enable this style of communication and learning leadership, these chapters resonate. Learning the right way to prepare and start such discussions, how to direct them, and how to conclude them in empowering rather than directing ways. These are important things to give your people their means to find their why. I am reminded of my own why in reading his words here, but also improved by these practical chapters and how they can be applied.
How far can coaching go?
I do disagree with Dave on one thing. His pragmatic stance is one in which the fundamentals of construction are considered beyond absolute change – it is just how it has evolved to be. My opinion, is that this confrontational industry norm is a reflection of how we set projects up. And if this more engaging coaching style of leadership were present in senior political spaces – where expectation was on leaders to bring teams with them, not just drive them hard to the next staging post – the projects serving these masters would be less caustic from the start. A world better informed and more real in its possibility in consideration of this project management style. But that is my research challenge – and therein my bias.
There is more I could offer in review. Dave has given plenty more insight and well reasoned connection to contemporary thought, similarly linking other behavioural thinking to construction project application. But I will let you read the rest for yourself. At 126 pages this is an afternoon’s single sitting read. But one to keep close by as that next chance to try “…a tool for challenging and supporting your people…”, pp14, to which both you and all your leaders-in-waiting should be demanding and apply.
Stitt, D (2022) “Coach for Results : empower your people to achieve the extraordinary” 21CPL Productions
…review structures and processes that could make a difference…
Lindsay Hoyle – Speaker of the House
This is a quote from today’s news. In my project world this kind of review is about matching the framework to the range of influence it intends to control. From the world of insuring construction projects I observe this matching of control to need is not done well. In project management academia I think we miss this point when considered holistically. In psychology this assessment of behaviour to aid control is understood in part, but typically only observed in simple settings and in a lab.
Sir Lindsay wrote: “In my opinion, it is time to consider radical action, and review structures and processes that could make a difference…”
“…serious allegations have been made, and we must address them as a matter of urgency. It is imperative we do the right thing by staff and MPs as well.”
BBC “Westminster reform: Lindsay Hoyle and Andrea Leadsom call for urgent changes” 1st May 2022
How control, influence, and intended change interact is what my research is all about. I am researching this in projects of construction. It is what I do in my consulting work. It is how I now orientate my own life.
At its heart, my research is directed toward a simple explanation that enables us all to ask more…
v | b | t
Here are some simple metrics of in applying this to the question of Parliament:
v | b | trust
We are directed toward lost trust. Where there is failed intent, we trust less. Establishing better frameworks for the intended change seems to me the sensible first assumed move to make. It is how to enable the electorate and the stewardship that serves us to regain some shared trust.
v | behaviour | t
We are addressing self-serving behaviour being empowered to serve itself. We are required to challenge innate motivations and compare what is happening to what is required. It instils the accountability of decision-makers and removes the defensive-decision making they hide behind. But more than that it so considers the suitability of their agendas, their capacity and capability, their judgement and the support systems they need. So that leaders can be what they intended to be, as servants to us all; not have what they intended to have, as servants to themselves.
visibility | b | t
We are seeking better visible to us all. An electorate that currently just has visibility of the indifference shown by the power-base. Visibility of deceit, misinformation, and calculations of what needs to said rather than what needs to be done. Legislation passed to protect past error in response to the questions we ask. Repeating evidence of leadership being the opposite of integrity and in not leading by example. What is needed is greater clarity on what is being intended. What vision is being worked towards. And what independent governance from independent source, ensures accountability of all.
Three possible latent origins of failure
Across each of these metrics we appear to have a failing framework of control in government. Beyond the personalities and party colours of the day, it is to our Administration that we should expect permeant control. I see three likely sources of failure that allow the wrong influences to reign:
1. the control of the internal system is failing
2. failure in the policing, the governance, or assurance of appropriate control
3. the clarity of intended change and to whom benefit is the primary goal
Either way the framework needs to have measure of all. Able to have account of all influences redirecting intended change. Thereby protecting the collectively agreed goals and/or the means to adapt such goal to the novelty of new or that which was previously unknown.
Projects | Within Projects
Whether in politics, or in charges of failure by the United Nations or World Health Organisation. Whether we are considering major projects like HS2 or Crossrail. If we are focused on decisions of priority to feed the hungry, or house the homeless, prevent needless bloodshed; or empower the entrepreneur, realign relationships with Europe, intervene in Ukraine, tackle climate change; or ensure our own growth upon a polluted home. Or, if we are addressing our personal purpose and how best to get there. All such intended change requires the appropriate selection of control, and account for all actor interests that may influence this goal for better or worse.
At its core, that is what is being called for here. At its heart, I contend that this is what we are all really asking for.
I had to give this one a try. It came to my attention too late but I tried anyway. My first PhD proposal has now been submitted. Let the learning begin.
Written in three days is not the ideal preparation. But as a forced period of solid focus and serious questioning of what I’m trying to contribute as research and how it fits to wider academic research overall, was useful reminders of what it’s all for. My passion lives here. I just hope that shines through.
18 pages of my heart and soul. A baseline reset that serves as a useful confirmation that my research, my study, my consulting, and my life choices, all still sit well upon long-term goals.
That’s a good weekend, come what may. Learnt much by learning how much more I have yet to do.
It took me quite some mental rebuilding before I was able to look this question in the eye. Not a day goes by now that I am not reminded of my answer. My answer from asking the right version of myself. It has become my means of innate motivation, intention, direction, and goal. It is how I have defined my project.
For me this is the visibility I needed. To what I direct my behaviours. What gives me a regained trust in myself. From which I have built critical controls to both enable and protect my project goal. From which I now proceed, mindful of external influence, and internal need.
Surprise attacks are effective because they take advantage of situational dissonance, i.e., actions by one party not anticipated by the other. Without offering much detail of events, I attempted to give this some thought across three media events that caught the headlines yesterday.
A slap in the face
Poison served as peace
Safe harbours no more for employment law pirates.
P&Ouch (created via MSWord)
Here I attempt to talk in terms of all three within categorical parameters I am using elsewhere to described project relationships
v | b | t
Hopefully familiar to anyone reading my blogs regularly, these are the interrelationship variables that represent a shared or separate set of interests namely, visibility | behaviour | trust. In the surprise move, we have:
One party disguising their intent (visibility | behaviour)
The other party perceiving no threat from the first (trust)
Additional factors in play
This gives me cause to revisit other factors in play in assessing threat. These are factors I have identified previously in the context of projects. Each seems to apply equally well here.
Influence – as Action Potential
Think of this as the spectrum of possible behaviours of each of the two or more parties. Typically dynamic, and therefore changeable over time. These are matters such as intent, motivation, belief, by which one party may find reason to choose or feel compelled to direct their energy. In neuroscience this is Action Potential. It is measured at cellular or neuronal level, but perhaps is an apt description between situational actors as well.
Right arena, right rules
In each of the three examples here, we have a definable space, and conventions that apply. The examples here:
confines of a spotlight;
a banner of truce;
legal employment frameworks deemed to be breakable rules.
But if we have the wrong arena in mind, we may have the wrong rules to apply. This highlights the importance of perspective or modal clarity.
What this additionally highlights is a threat to one actors safety, enabled because the wrong arena has been assumed. In these examples:
a single safe spotlight becoming a shared stage;
a table of negotiators but needing to see a wider arena concealing snipers, poisoners, or media spin:
a marketplace as a transport operator but finding safe harbour no more
Control environment
We have the perceived safety of a control environment therefore proved false:
A comedian’s sanctuary to say anything without reproach;
Rules of combat that may not prevail under a banner of diplomatic truce;
Legal rights of employees, legal expectations of ship owner and port authority.
Dynamics of change
To which we can then revisit influence and the appropriateness of control. Perhaps these two factors can be linked as situational awareness. Influence as an observable variable, positively or negatively directional towards self-interest or shared goal. To which the assessment of totality of range of possible behaviours, and appropriateness of controls can then be compared.
v | Behaviour as covert action | t
I need to now extend the range of behaviour. Not only is self-interest vs shared interest now possible. We now have shared interest defaulting to self-interest deteriorating to intentional harm of another. This requires visibility to be intentionally obfuscated and an illusion of trust to be maintained. This means we can have completely the opposite of full information i.e., [-1, 0, +1]
The hidden truth
Together these factors in each arena seem to help explain what was perceived versus what transpired. And how combative aims were concealed. By breaching the perception of trust we have a means to consider a bigger range of action potential as hidden intent.
Accordingly, when there is covert (as opposed to overt) action potential, this is beyond a poorly shared truth. This is concealment, and acting within a lie. Self-serving, self-justifying harm.
Is it too much to suggest in a caveat emptor project world, we occasionally fit this expanded mould?
One more?
And what of today’s headlines? Knock-knock Prime Minister. Plenty of eyes are now looking behind your door.
My thanks to Chris Bragg for a line of questioning that prompting these prose; Jason Hier for promoting the dialogue from which I repeat my part in here; and Dinah Turner who generated the original visual prompt. All of which started {here}, a discussion on LinkedIn. My thanks also to Bill Sherman. Another LinkedIn thread {here}, one with a challenge I accepted yesterday, and answer at the end of this blog.
Visibility of what? v | b | t in context
Visibility for my project purposes i.e., Visibility | b | t , is addressing transparency between parties. Directed towards what is known and what remains uncertain. In our projects, how much visibility are we sharing one party (project actor) to the next?
This is how visibility relates behaviour i.e., v | behaviour | t , as transparency by one party to the next. This transparency reveals or hides certain behaviour. That could be our intentions, motivations, or actions. Derived perhaps from something as simple as our hubris or belief that we are surely right. Or something more self-interested or malevolent. From these two variables we can ask if we are affording the right level of trust i.e., v | b | trust , to the exchange. Assessing all three presents an indication of collaborative nature, as it relates to all parties supporting the intended change, as project truth.
How are we safeguarding a project from what we do not know?
This sketch, from Dinah Turner, prompted the wider discussion I refer to above. If the dot was the minimal amount of necessary information, Jason Hier teased us with asking what if it was as little as 1%, then let’s respond with the question as a percentage of what? We need to have more awareness to the reality that somethings are not knowable – but that our processes need to have the adaptability to manage these later realisations.
Image used with permission from Dinah Turner
As a graphic to reflect our limited availability of information, what was prompted here was a discussion around making best use of the little information we have. From my perspective (as related to project knowledge), the diagram also presented a third area of interest. (1) the spot of what is known; (2) the assumed everything there is; (3) a challenge to the assumption we can ever bound everything there is to know – beyond the circle. This is what Gigerenzer (2014) would reflect upon when comparing risk vs. uncertainty. It is the difference between working within a closed system vs one that interrelates to more. Or Engwall‘s “no project is an island” from which we can remove ourselves from closed system thinking in any project situation. Combining these two principles, we always have some uncertainty. I suggest the circle in the above graphic houses “the question we asked”. But outside the circle is “the question we wish we knew to pose”. From here we can hope to critically appraise the manner of any decisions being made, for what purpose, and from an information perspective we can ask “based upon what?“.
Being able to seek clarity on what the 1% represents enables better questions. Anyone who knows me, will know that my most likely answer to a question, is another question. This is because a question directs our attention to a set of assumptions and constraints. Are these parameters intended to facilitate an open dialogue, or are they intended to funnel and dissuade a wider perspective? Is this reflecting behaviour of the person posing the question, that we trust to have this right?
It is at these earliest of moments – in defining both problem and constraints – that we can begin to become unstuck. And why we should all therefore be first challenging the question, to see what visibility, behaviour, and trust, is represented. See other blogs on these areas individually, including for example sensemaking and wider problem solving perspectives.
Projects as time bound intended change
This is a dynamic position, and therefore change. In the modelling idea I have in mind, this is where my attempt to define everything by a project definition comes into play: as time bound intended change. And that any change, even one of enquiry, can be captured by this project definition.
Projects within projects
This also challenges us to consider if our collaborative practices are ever actually aimed at the same project. Or are two project actors working on their own projects and attempting to direct outcomes to their own intended outcome – even if that is at the expense of the other. I have in mind here game theory models that represent zero sum outcomes (winner:loser); or those where lesser outcomes emerge because of failures to cooperate (see prisoner’s dilemma, or tragedy of the commons, as examples).
Other factors are then able to be introduced:
direction of influence. Interests directed into the one project, or away from the project and directed instead toward the party with most momentary influence.
manner of project control to support the retained inward influence of both the one project aim and protection of all project actors.
These are factors that relate to potential outcomes. The one shared outcome, if we are claiming to be in the one same project. Each factor (visibility, behaviour, trust, influence, and control) the aggregation of contributing factors. So, if a question is asked with a hidden or misguided agenda in mind, the project of enquiry is immediately more likely to fail. Failure because it fails at least one participant, and probably the project overall. Or if the intent was misdirection, there was never a single project with the two parties in mind.
At bigger scale, this is why the inevitable uncertainty that exists is eroding this collaborative endeavour if it is simply defined and offloaded in contract. This is not the same as project outcome control. It is more simply a financial risk transfer with increased likelihood of dispute. Arguably a later revelation that project truth never existed. Only the roughly aligned interests of the two separate projects and outcomes each party was interested in, influencing, and operating with suboptimal visibility, behaviour, and trust.
I would argue this is the default position in construction. As one example where hidden agenda is almost always assumed, even if not shown. Low visibility as data is filtered between commercial boundaries. Malevolent behaviours. No trust. Contracts attempting to replace trust, but therein failing to regain control.
If this observation is accepted, then it offers an rough guide to likelihood of project success. If we see a project with inadequate control of its truth (the totality of visibility, behaviour, and trust) it is a riskier project than it needs to be. It is representing a project at risk of unseen influences, permitting malevolent interests, and abuses of empowerment bestowed. Therein is the prospect of increased potential for dispute, plus missed opportunity to intervene.
Are we one project? My ongoing hypothetical
I am yet to be convinced we can ever truly be one project. It is why this entire blogsite is called Projects | Within Projects. But I do think we can seek to ensure our own projects are more closely aligned. As well as all the other project assessments we undertake, I am suggesting this v | b | t assessment of the many influences, directed at the appropriateness of controls containing them, can be one of those higher level quick indications of the human made threats to success.
This affords a simple question, “why say yes to this project?“. Why as a potential project actor agree to enter this enterprise if the divergent interests are not a central focus of control? Why insure it? Why invest in it? Why be party to it? Why approve it? If one can heuristically identify this increased chance of failure, the questions you ask can all be directed this way.
This is visibility | behaviour | trust as a rule of thumb. A heuristic tool, directed at the overall collaborative interest at a project’s core. A work in progress. One that keeps me returning to first principles, new discourse, and regular revisits to this hypothesis as I go.
Agreed or not agreed – is that my question?
And finally…to the challenge I am responding to.
Can you distil your best ideas down into a simple question?
Bill Sherman – a writer of thought leadership, and taking ideas to scale. His post yesterday was quite different. He compared NASA mission statements to those we each set ourselves. He offered contemporary examples of the questions NASA set to define their missions. Each a single question – pithy and capturing the imagination of any five year old or older still living with a sense of wonder. His challenge, which I agreed, is to set my idea into a single question. What is the essence of what this big idea is trying to do?
Bills advises us to be guided by the following:-
What’s your big idea that you’re pursuing?
How are you staying connected to your sense of wonder?
Are you able to explain that wonder to others?
Here’s a quick way to check:
1. Write your big idea in one sentence that evokes joy/wonder. 2. Then, test it out. Ask people what they think. 3. Keep going until people say “wow.”
I will confess to writing this entire blog with this question in mind. So here goes, attempt number one.
Can our modelling of projects be linked, to better guide all scales of intended change?
Version one
Can success or failure be gauged by a simple assessment of external influences and resulting appropriateness of project controls?
Version two
Projects are jeopardised if rogue influence gains control: can we avoid the invitations to fail?
